They will all be owned by ExxonTacobellTmobile soon enough.
CupoJoe’s Bought Out by Sutliff
- Thread starter oldgeezersmoker
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On the other hand, I've cultivated a years-long personal buyer-seller relationship with Cup O Joes. If that relationship falls behind an iron curtain of hermetic corporate practice negotiated beforehand by megalithic players, I'll have lost something very valuable to me.
Point taken. But I’m sure no-one woke up with a horse’s head next to them in bed. Cup O Joes sold voluntarily for reasons that were good and sufficient to them. Customers have little if any say in when an owner decides to exit their business. If a sale is going to take place anyway I maintain the consumer is no worse off, and probably much better, if a third strong competitor emerges as a result of the transaction.
Cup O Joes is definitely a good house. I used to acquire quite a bit of esoterica/Germain’s from them when I was hunting. We’ll see how it goes. 
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️If Kathleen Kelly is happy- and I was told she is- then I am happy. When she started the CupoJoes internet operation, she was one of the pioneers, along with Boswell and Tobacco Supermarket (Royal Cigar) in Atlanta.
In those early days, lots of Brick and Mortar owners actively opposed anyone on the internet doing anything with pipes and tobacco. The only reason that the three shops mentioned were able to get distributors to sell to them was because they also had a physical storefront. Distributors had been pressured by bigwigs in the RTDA and TAA to not sell to any accounts unless they had a physical location.
I, too, had a good personal relationship with them, and they got the vast majority of my orders for HTF blends, but I’m not really chasing much these days. Kathy has worked hard, and I hope she enjoys her payday.
In those early days, lots of Brick and Mortar owners actively opposed anyone on the internet doing anything with pipes and tobacco. The only reason that the three shops mentioned were able to get distributors to sell to them was because they also had a physical storefront. Distributors had been pressured by bigwigs in the RTDA and TAA to not sell to any accounts unless they had a physical location.
I, too, had a good personal relationship with them, and they got the vast majority of my orders for HTF blends, but I’m not really chasing much these days. Kathy has worked hard, and I hope she enjoys her payday.
It’s interesting the physical store isn’t part of the deal though. They are just exiting the online space but otherwise staying open?
Give it a few years and pipesmagazine will own everything
I cannot remember the name of the lady who ran this operation. However, her house was not far from the B&M I worked at. Around 2015 one of my regulars told me she still had jars of bulk from Royal Cigar that she was getting ready to get rid of, as she was looking to get out of the business completely. She ran her online operation from her living room. There were bookcases filling the spaces with the remaining inventory she had left. I grabbed a few tins from her but I also got some of that jarred up bulk. Turns out that each jar was sealed with wax and over 10 years old. I grabbed some G&H Curly Cut and Rattray's Marlin Flake. I stayed and talked with her for a long while. She and her family had been in the business for a long time here in Atlanta.
I suppose Cup-O-Joes will no longer be able to ship pipe tobacco to me here in Maine, no longer being strictly a "small" operation.
This is my concern. I worry that there's lots of things CupOJoes will no longer be able to do at their discretion, being just another arm of the hydra.
That simply never happens, though. It's just a myth.
Take the health sector. A few decades ago, every doctor had his own practice---occasionally with a partner or two---and getting injured or sick was like any other situation. Like hiring a plumber, electrician, whatever. Getting some stiches in a finger or setting a broken bone cost about the same as hiring any other specialist in society.
Today, something like that costs many thousands of dollars, involves many hours of phone time and paperwork, involves deliberately obfuscated costs, four and five figure deductibles, and is by far the leading cause of bankruptcies in the USA. Annual medical billables total over two trillion dollars, in fact. Not nearly enough money to attract lawyers, greedy self-interested snakes eager to insert themselves into formerly simple transactions, form "doctor corporations" with high-powered collection departments whose first order of business after being established is hitting financial targets, or ANY of that...
"Hydra"... lol
You conspiracy theorists crack me up.
Man's nature is, and will always be, fairness, reasonableness, straight dealing, helpfulness, and aspiring to excellence in execution regardless of the area of endeavor.
In short, lovers of Cup-O-Joes as it is today (count me among them!) has nothing to worry about. Screwing things up to squeeze a few extra dollars out of such an operation is simply not how large, acquisitive companies with SWAT teams of cost accountants work.
Holy crap George! I just called to place an order and they wanted my Social Security number, a $25 co-pay, pre-authorization from my insurer, an MRI, and an executed litigation waiver providing full indemnification and a binding arbitration clause. Plus I have to overnight them blood, urine, and stool samples (luckily I produced one sample that checked all the boxes). I’m beginning to wonder if all this is worth it for a tin of Cross-Eyed Cricket.
For one example, I doubt Sutliff will “cooperate” with international customers on customs declarations as CupoJoes would. And if you were a good customer and told them about what HTF you were looking for, they would try to make sure you got some before they put it on the web, something Tobacco Pipes wouldn’t do, at least with regard to Esoterica. A list of people and things they were looking for was given to Sutliff, but they didn’t seem interested. I’m not waiting for a phone call or email from the new owners.
Ah...no.
P&C is owned by STG, the Scandinavian Tobacco Group. Rival to Mac Baren, and quite a bit bigger, too. If anything was to happen in that arena, it would be STG buying Mac Baren.